Striking out, looking

A blog is measured by its productivity. Or, it’s measured by its quality. It’s measured by different things by different people in different situations, and those different factors lead to different differences. No one knows what a successful blog is, outside of “this blog makes me money, dawg.”

So you make it up. And that’s okay, because this is blogging, people. This is ego massaging. This is free-form writing, and there aren’t many rules, and if you think there are then you’re probably doing it wrong.

But sometimes, we get stuck looking for rules.

Which is why this is the first blog post on Black Marks on Wood Pulp in two weeks. (Official meta note: that’s the longest stretch without content the site has seen since not being a site at all.)

Why? Dunno. It’s 100% mental.

Because I read a lot of blog posts from a lot of people who are very good at writing blog posts, and a constant stream of great blog posts gives the illusion that every post is perfect and that I need to pick up my game.

Instead of getting hits when I can, I’ve been aiming for home runs. I’ve been waiting for the perfect pitch. I’ve been striking out looking.

I’ve tricked myself into thinking that there’s this one blog out there that posts something brilliant every day. Nope. Not true.

Instead, there’s thousands of blogs out there that, as a collective, through sheer numbers, post one or two great things each day. And fail. Hundreds of times each day.

Fail? Nah. That’s not right at all. They simply don’t resonate as far as those great ones. But they’re still there, and they’ve still done something, and that consistency of hits goes a long way toward making the home runs worth something.